Charles Carter (of Ludlow)

Carter operated plantations using overseers and enslaved labor, first in King George County. As a young man, this Charles Carter became known for his profligate spending, so that in 1762 his father bequeathed his main plantation, Cleve in King George County, to his younger half brother, and required this man to acknowledge that he had received ample provision in land and slaves from his father and that his father had paid some of his large debts. Nonetheless, when his father died two years later, this Charles Carter successfully contested that will and caused the Virginia General Assembly to break the entail on several properties, which he then sold, as well as borrowed money from his wife's brother in law Speaker John Robinson to buy "Nanzatico", a 2,200 acre plantation also in King George County, on which be built a spacious new house, only to (according to tradition) tear it down and erect another.^[7] After Speaker Robinson died, this Carter became involved in the scandal involving Robinson's loans using paper money scheduled to be destroyed, and lost a court judgment to the estate's executor. He sold Nanzitico to his cousin, Charles Hill Carter, and moved his family to Ludlow, a plantation he owned in Staiford County where he also built a house.^[1]

Carter initially represented King George County in the House of Burgesses for fifteen years, at first alongside his father, the county's largest landowner. After moving to Stafford County, as he had in King George County, Carter served as a justice of the peace (the justices jointly also responsible for the county's administration). Carter also represented Stafford County in the House of Burgesses, but took that seat either on an interim basis in 1773 or in May 1774, but Virginia's last colonial governor first nullified one election in the county, then suppressed the entire body about a year later. Stafford County voters then elected this Charles Carter to four of the five Virginia Revolutionary Conventions, and after the 4th Convention, he left to produce saltpeter at several locations in northern and southwestern Virginia. Carter did not stand for election for the last convention, as he was occupied running the important Chiswell lead mines in what later became Wythe County. Stafford County voters then elected him as one of their first two representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates, and continued to re-elect him until he resigned in order to become the Stafford County sheriff. Carter again won election to the Virginia House of Delegates (still a part time position) in 1782, and again won re-election.^[7] Carter favored adoption of the federal constitution, but did not win election to the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788; instead local voters elected George Mason, whose family had long held property and represented Stafford County, but who lived in Fairfax County and was a leading (though unsuccessful) opponent of ratification. Carter's last major election victory was for the Virginia state senate seat in 1789, representing King George, Stafford and Westmoreland Counties, but he may not have actually been seated in Richmond, for a new election was called weeks later.^[8] However, such may also have been called because fellow delegates elected Carter to the Council of State (the executive branch of the state government, at the time dominated by the state legislature), for which service he received a salary and served uneventfully for fourteen months.^[1]

After selling his last plantation, Ludlow, in 1788 to satisfy creditors' demands, Carter lived in Fredericksburg, and his wife advertised for boarders from a nearby academy. In the 1790s, this Charles Carter corresponded several times with President George Washington, appealing for assistance for his sons, one of whom he had bound as an apprentice to a Philadelphia coachmaker and two others to planters. His fourth son studied medicine in Philadelphia. His cousin Charles Hill Carter also allowed this man's wife to retain the earnings of several slaves which this man had sold to him, which kept this family out of poverty during their final years.^[1]

Charles Carter died in Fredericksburg on April 29, 1796, and was buried in the Willis family cemetery, one of his brothers having married a Willis.^[1] One of his grandsons, John C. Carter (son of Walker Randolph Carter), became a U.S. Naval officer from Kentucky, served during the Mexican American War and the American Civil War, and died in Brooklyn.^[9]